THE GOOD NEWS
ARCHBISHOP BELTRAN
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November 18, 2007 The Good News... ...Thanksgiving and Renewal To all people of our Archdiocese and to your families and friends, I extend my very best personal greetings and wishes for a very happy and holy Thanksgiving Day. I ask Almighty God to bless you and all your loved ones in a very special way during this Thanksgiving-Christmas season. As people of faith, we all know that God is good and loving. We rejoice in His presence among us and strive to open ourselves to His mercy and love. At the same time, each of us as individual human persons and as members of families and communities, experience tensions and difficulties in our relationships with each other. All of us, at some time or another, have felt the pain and sorrow of confrontation, misunderstanding, mistakes and failures. Sometimes we ourselves are the cause of these conflicts. Our guilt lies in the fact that there are times we do the wrong thing. Other times we do nothing, thereby failing to do the right thing! In the Sacred Scriptures, God extols the person of humble and contrite heart. He calls us. He urges us. Jesus invites us to repent and to change so that His grace will work in us. Only God’s transforming power can enable us to be refreshed and renewed. Only God’s grace can heal us and make us whole. How fortunate we are that God’s help is available to us at all times! However, to be effective in us, we must lovingly receive God’s grace and follow His direction. God’s direction is given to us in many places in the Bible. In one of those instances, Jesus reminds us that if we are in prayer, at the altar, about to offer our gift to Him but remember that our brother or sister has something against us, we must stop immediately. Jesus says, “Leave your gift there at the altar and first go and be reconciled with your brother or sister.” Only after you have forgiven them can we return to offer God our gift. It is often very difficult to acknowledge our guilt or our fault. It is even harder to forgive one who has perpetrated evil against us. Yet, there is no other way to bring about healing and reconciliation without mercy and forgiveness. It makes no difference who the culprit is, the positive difference is made by the one who repents, who forgives and who serves as the instrument of God. Notice, Jesus doesn’t tell us to try to justify ourselves. Nor does He tell us to confront or reprimand the other person. Rather, He urges us to take the initiative and to work for peace and reconciliation. What better time to do the right thing than now at Thanksgiving and Christmas and the beginning of a New Year? What better way than to daily offer the beautiful prayer of Saint Francis? Yes, I ask you and I encourage you to recite this prayer daily at least for the remainder of 2007. Do not do it only as a poem or a literary exercise or a nice expression. Say it daily as a prayer. Let each invocation be a personal request for God’s love and guidance. Through this prayer, let us acknowledge that we are restored and saved not by our own human efforts but only by the grace and mercy and power of God who loves us totally and completely. A Prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi Lord,
make me an instrument of Your peace O Divine
Master, grant that
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